Swear Words

Do you swear? Hang out with people who swear? Read books where characters swear? Does it bother you? If so, why?

I'm torn on this subject.

On the one hand, I was taught by a wise playwrighting professor at BYU that all words are morally neutral. There are no "bad" words, just bad context. Even the dreaded F-word can be used effectively in a way that teaches a moral message.

But if you use those words,will anyone notice your message?

The main problem with the traditional "curse words," in my opinion, is not that each word is bad, in and of itself, but that society has attached so much subtext to each one, they have become rather unwieldy to use.

Let's examine, shall we?

As I see it, swear words fall into four basic categories: crude, gender-hating, religious, and sexual.

Crude words are those that refer to the more unsavory bodily functions or the regions from which they come, such as (I'll use asterisks to avoid offending your eyes and attracting google searches I might not want) sh**, pi**, and a** It seems to me that we look down on those who use them in non-medical conversations mainly because they're impolite. We don't want to talk about bathroom functions at the office. This doesn't explain why euphemisms of these words are more accepted. Crud, or poo, for example: how, exactly, are those different from sh**? And how is butt or even bottom different from a**? Anyone?

It's not semantics: it's subtext.We think differently about someone who says butt than we think of someone who says a**. There's no reason that I can see, but there it is.

Gender-Hating words seem to be more plentiful in female varieties than male, but, as I see it, they're offensive because they cast one gender in a negative light or serve to basely objectify an individual. The word bastard seems to have fallen out of disfavor lately, but it used to be a horrible insult to suggest someone's parents weren't married. Now, it is used mainly to refer to an insensitive male, though it still seems to suggest that the one so labeled is (or should be) of a lower caste of society. Similarly, b**ch isn't quite so bad as it used to be, though it still suggests that the woman is animalistic and short-tempered. Worse, and still quite offensive to most of society, are those words that refer directly (and negatively) to female anatomy, such as c**t. (It is interesting that dick can actually be a man's first name.) Though the actual definition of this base insult doesn't even make sense ("You are such a vagina." "Huh?"), it is universally understood to be negative. And insulting.

When people use these words, we generally label them as insensitive and boorish. We see them as unrefined and mean. These words carry a bite to them that the more medical terminology does not, mainly because they've been thrown around by angry people for so long that they seem to retain some of that anger, even when used more neutrally.

Religious words are those that are found in the Bible--and are perfectly fine when found there. In church, it is rarely offensive to talk about Jesus Christ, God, and all the people who were damned to hell. The difference comes when these words are used out of context, in casual or offensive ways their originators never intended. I met a man once who seemed gleeful that he would mention Jesus Christ whenever he dropped something, thereby proving that he thought of Him a lot. This was a little offensive to me.

It seems to me that these words became curse words in an act of defiance against authority, and remain offensive because some of us hold them sacred and dislike to have them used in non-religious ways. (For me, this prohibition does not extend to the words damn and hell. They are my most frequent curse-word indulgence.) Those who use these words out of a religious context are often seen as sacrilegious and rebellious. It can send the message that you are not a "good" or holy person.

Sexual words like the omnipresent f*** are essentially like the crude, potty words. They refer to a natural process in a crass way. Not because stringing four letters together makes something good turn bad, but because society has decided that, for whatever reason, good people don't say that word. It becomes impossible to use it, even in the appropriate context, without dragging the societal subtext along with it.

So what's a writer to do? What, specifically, is a YA writer to do? It is ridiculous to suggest that putting these words in our books will expose otherwise innocent minds to awful letter combinations that will scar them for life. It is possible that excessive repetition will encourage young mouths to parrot these words, thus drawing the associated sub-textual judgments upon themselves... but, really, can a single book hope to reach the numbers of repetition that our young people hear at school on a typical day? Will seeing it in black and white really make that much of a difference?

I think, when it comes right down to it, we need to be careful with these words not because they're "bad," and not because people might judge our characters (bad words might actually help our characterizations) but because we need to be aware of our audience.

You've probably all had at least one "conversation" with someone determined to prove how bad-a** s/he is. This type of person will sprinkle expletives throughout his speech until you can hardly discern what he's talking about. It's very frustrating. In this sort of speech, the bleepity-bleep words have as much meaning as, well bleepity-bleeps. If he would cut them out, the meaning would be much clearer. But these sorts of people often use "bad" words without regard to context. They could be talking about going to the store or *shudder* playing with a baby. They use them as filler words the way the rest of us might use "um" or "ah" or "you know." After a lengthy conversation with one of these, I stop noticing the swear words. My brain has to filter them completely out or I'll never figure out what they're saying. So all those words become a complete waste of breath. No more shock value. No more convincing me he's a bad-a**. Just meaningless bleepity-bleeps.

So be hyper-aware of your use of swear words in your writing (and in your speech, by the way). Not because you're going to go to hell for using them or because you're going to send someone else there because they hear/read them. Because when you use one, you drag along the subtext. The small zing of shock value. All of society's judgments on your characters' heads. But when you use lots... you're wasting ink.

What do you think? Do you use swear words in your writing?

YA Saves--Counterpoint

After my blog post critiquing Meghan Cox Gurdon’s two attention-getting essays on YA fiction on Tuesday, I was advised by some commenters that I had stated my case a bit too broadly. I was forced to concede some points. I’d like to elaborate on those points. Because if you can’t argue with yourself, who can you argue with?

Point #1: Ms. Gurdon is not an idiot for stating her opinion or for sticking to it, if she truly believes it to be correct

Although I didn’t actually call Ms. Gurdon an idiot, I did say “Because when thousands are calling you an idiot, you should always stick to your guns.”

It’s not the worst that has been said of Ms. Gurdon, but this is my blog and I have a deep-seated need to be diplomatic, so let me clarify. When you truly believe you are in the right, you do not have to change your opinion, no matter how many people disagree with you. It takes a lot of strength to advocate for an unpopular opinion, and sometimes the unpopular is right.

I don’t think so in this case, but still. It can happen.

What I should have said is that when thousands of people are calling you an idiot, it is sometimes prudent to examine your position, inspect it for flaws, acknowledge the places you can bend, the places where perhaps you overstated your case, and provide concrete examples to back up the rest.

Extraordinary positions require extraordinary proof.  Ms. Gurdon did not supply any proof, even after her position was attacked. She cited no studies which have examined the effect of negative YA elements on YA readers. Provided no anecdotes from readers who date their personal moral decline from the day they read "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Quoted no parents who noticed marked negative behavior changes in their teen readers after they read "Rage."  She didn’t even recount a personal anecdote about how profoundly disturbed she was for days after she finished "The Marbury Lens" and how she’s been suffering ever since.

Instead, she rests on her observation that there are bad elements in lots of YA books, hypothesizes that these bad elements might have negative effects on some impressionable readers, and leaves that suggestion to fester in the minds of paranoid parents everywhere. She didn’t use the C-word, and has specifically asserted that she doesn’t believe in censoring books, but she must excuse the YA community for being afraid that others might be inflamed enough by her unsupported musings to make that very leap.

Because that’s what uninformed people do with unsupported fear-mongering. They take a hint of trouble with a capital T, notice it rhymes with C, and make sure that stands for Censor. If that’s not what she meant to do, she should have been more careful. Perhaps she could have taken the time to share with us how to judge the message of a book by its cover, or at least acknowledged some of the good things that can come of the books she’s attacking.

If she needs examples, she hasn’t been paying that much attention to #YASaves on Twitter.

Point #2: Some elements can feel damaging, in and of themselves, depending on the reader

Fiction can be powerful. In the hands of a master wordsmith, readers can come away from a scene or a book actually feeling like they experienced what was described. That’s not always fun. It’s not always healthy. It’s not always ideal. A detailed scene of violent rape, for instance, can have lingering negative effects on an individual, even if the author takes pains to show how the victim overcame her trauma. It can be unsettling to learn that such evil exists in the world.

I’m a huge fan of Dan Wells’s books about 15-year-old sociopath John Wayne Cleaver, beginning with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER. I love the message of the books—that you can overcome any odds and choose your own path in life. That you can decide how to act, even if all your instincts are dictating a different destiny. I find the books inspiring and uplifting, in a bloody, gritty, screaming sort of way. Even though John witnesses and even does horrible things, the books never once suggest that the horrible things are good. They call evil evil and evil is overcome. I find them inspiring.

My mother disagrees. On my recommendation, she read the first book. She found it to be “soul-destroying.” She (rather insultingly) wondered how anyone could read such depravity and not be damaged by it.

My mother is a generally reasonable woman. She is not taken to fits of sentimentality or illogical thinking. If she found the books personally offensive to such a degree, it’s because she truly felt that way. Same with one commenter on my Tuesday post, who described her “soul damaging” experiences with two separate YA books. I’ve had several online conversations with this woman and find her to be very level-headed. (She liked Dan Wells’ books.)

So how do I reconcile my mother’s and my friend’s experiences with my own? I don’t have to. Everyone is different. Perhaps I’ve already been exposed to so much of the horrible side of life that it is harder to shock me. (I do read a lot of police reports.) Perhaps the elements themselves don’t matter as much to me as the overall message. Perhaps others are more sensitive. That’s okay. People are different. This is why it’s irresponsible to say that such-and-such an element is always bad—or always good.

I do want to make it clear that I do not feel my soul has been destroyed by any of the horrible things I’ve read about, either in fiction or in real life. It’s intact, thank you very much. (I teach Sunday school, so it better be.)  Souls are remarkably resilient, actually.

So are teens. Even well-adjusted teens who haven’t been traumatized by real life. Though many of them may not enjoy learning about ugly things and may find they have to reflect on them to an uncomfortable degree in order to process what they’ve read, process they will. If the truth has been told, even if that truth is ugly, they will eventually learn to accept it. They will move on. They will still be happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. They will perhaps be wiser.

That doesn’t mean that there is a necessary virtue in facing the horrible things in life and accepting them. But for those who do, who can endure the adjustment, there is a world of empathy on the other side. There is an increased ability to understand the many ways a heart can be broken and how it can be put back together again. There is perhaps not as much peace, but there is still joy.

Point #3: Characters shouldn’t live in a consequence-free zone

The most damaging thing a YA book can do, in my opinion, is lie to a child. Telling a child, for instance, that they are worthless, or that they have no hope for happiness, can destroy them. They should never be told that good is evil, that evil is good, or that they have no power to choose between the two.

It should never be suggested that they can do what they want without suffering the natural consequences.

If there is any sometimes-legitimate complaint to be made about YA fiction today -- and, really, adult fiction has this problem, too -- I think this is it. Teenage characters get drunk and get high and are perfectly competent the next day. They never get thrown in juvie for smoking cigarettes. Teenage girls willingly sleep with adult men and no one points out that those men could now properly be labeled sex-offenders. They damage property, steal, and trespass and, so long as they’re having lighthearted fun while they do it, very few characters come away with a juvenile record and community service.

That’s just not accurate. Or, if it is, it might not be the best truth to reinforce.

One of the hallmarks of adolescence is a decreased ability to appreciate consequences. Many teens will unthinkingly destroy their own or someone else’s life because they don’t stop to consider what will happen next. The books they read should help remind them of the power of consequence—not reinforce their mistaken belief in their own invincibility.

It’s impossible, of course, when writing a book, to include a consequence for every last action – and even more impossible to include consequences that everyone will agree with. Authors must pick and choose which parts of “reality” will help build their theme, and which will distract a reader from the main story.  I think that, overall, authors in general and YA authors especially try to be very responsible with cause and effect. They try to show that negative actions bring negative rewards.  It doesn’t happen in every scene of every book, but I think few YA books can be accused of a blatant disregard for responsibility.

Responsibility is what parents are for. I frequently point out to my sons that, hey, this car chase they think is so cool? That “hero” will be paying off restitution on all those crashed cars for the rest of his life… if he ever makes it out of prison for sideswiping that cop car and causing it to flip like that. Aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer isn’t something to mess around with.

In the end, I think I can agree with Ms. Gurdon on this point: Parents should be the gatekeepers of what their children are ready to read. I’ll even take it one step further: Parents should be the tour guides as well. They should lead the way through the horror. They should answer questions and refer their children to additional resources. They should be a sounding board and a touchstone.

Above all, they should never presume to declare what is good or bad for someone else’s children. They should never declare that a certain work of fiction has no value for anyone. They should never judge a book by its cover.

So what did I miss this time? :)

[Note: this blog post was posted simultaneously on International Business Times-Business & Books, which also linked to my post from Tuesday: YA Saves--Especially when it shows evil. When they contacted me about republishing the first, I was already planning this counterpoint, so they published this instead. Go check em out!]

YA Saves--Especially when it shows evil

Okay, I resisted last time. So many cool YA authors were on the front lines of defense that I figured my own voice would be superfluous.  Perhaps it still is. I like to talk regardless, so here goes.

On June 4, 2011, Meghan Cox Gurdon published an essay called Darkness Too Visible in the Wall Street Journal in which she made a perfectly valid observation that there was a lot of darkness, drug use, sexual misconduct, violence, and general ugliness in YA fiction these days. If she'd just pointed it out, we'd all have just nodded our heads and commented on how observant she was. She didn't stop there, though. Instead, she vilified the practice, accusing those who write dark-themed YA books of poisoning the minds of the rising generation. She argued that exposing them to such awful themes made those themes more commonplace, and made the readers correspondingly more likely to mimic the actions of the deeply flawed protagonists.

Twitter exploded (see the #YASaves hashtag). YA blogs screamed (see Nathan Bransford's list of responding blogs). Almost everyone was firmly in support of dark YA and lashed out at Ms. Gurdon for saying such awful things about it.

The June 28, 2011 WSJ contains another essay by Ms. Gurdon entitled My 'Reprehensible' Take on Teen Literature. Because when thousands are calling you an idiot, you should always stick to your guns.

Her new essay is shorter than her first, but again makes the point that dark YA serves to normalize themes we'd do better to shelter our young ones from:

It is true that so-called problem novels may be helpful to children in anguished circumstances. The larger question is whether books about rape, incest, eating disorders and "cutting" (self-mutilation) help to normalize such behaviors for the vast majority of children who are merely living through the routine ordeals of adolescence.

There are real-world reasons for caution. For years, federal researchers could not understand why drug- and tobacco-prevention programs seemed to be associated with greater drug and tobacco use. It turned out that children, while grasping the idea that drugs were bad, also absorbed the meta-message that adults expected teens to take drugs. Well-intentioned messages, in other words, can have the unintended consequence of opening the door to expectations and behaviors that might otherwise remain closed.

Now Ms. Gurdon has a valid concern. We may not agree with her conclusions, but I'm sure none of us wants to unintentionally encourage our young readers to mirror the bad behaviors of our characters.

I think, though, that Ms. Gurdon is missing the key difference between drug education programs and stories. Drug education programs give warning information. In much the same way sex education has been criticized for encouraging teenage sexual activity, drug education can't help but convey the idea that "we expect many of you-who-are-sitting-in-this-room to try this."

Stories are different.

Stories. Are. Different.

I attended college at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. That's that Mormon school, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and proud to be listed as the most "Stone Cold Sober" school in the United States. Our honor code couldn't eradicate the foibles of youth, but it sure did a lot to discourage most of them.

My "home" building was the Harris Fine Arts Center, which would occasionally place barricades at all entrances warning conservative students and faculty that a "possibly offensive" fine art exhibit was currently on display in the main gallery. They did that not because they believed that the exhibits were worthy of censor, but because conservatives would complain otherwise.

Conservatives liked to complain about the theatre productions, too. When Brecht's The Chalk Circle was produced there, the department head received letters criticizing everything from the man taking a bath, fully clothed in the upside-down-table-tub to the man-removed-his-belt-and-threatened-to-rape-the-girl scene to the fourth-wall violations. *Gasp!* Such letter-writers thought that such plays ought not to be produced at a church university. Such letter-writers didn't know their church history.

Joseph Smith, the first LDS prophet, formed theatre troupes. Brigham Young, the second prophet, acted in them. When the saints relocated to the desert that was the Salt Lake valley, the crops were barely in the ground when the first theater was built. Brigham Young insisted that his 10 oldest daughters act in the productions so that the productions would be well-attended.

These productions were not full of sweetness and light. The plays weren't all about Jane finding the gospel and how much better her life was, now that she never cursed. The plays were about evil.

Brigham Young said:

Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards, the weakness and the follies of man, the magnanimity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls … can be revealed, and how to shun it” (Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe, Salt Lake City: Desert Book, 1941, p. 243).

Did you catch the catch? You can't teach the consequences of sin without showing it. That's the original purpose of the theater: to teach the audience through story what they can expect if their behavior should mirror the behavior of the characters. That effect is called catharsis--we get to purge negative emotions without screwing up our own lives in the process.

No matter your religion, the principle holds true: people (including children) learn better through experience. We don't want them to experience rape, violence, drug use, cutting, bullying, damaging sexual relationships, or petty ugliness in their real lives. What to do? Catharsis. Vicarious purging. Expose them to a character they can relate to who will crawl through the muck for them, and take them along. Show them how--and WHY--bad decisions are made. Let your young readers scream at the pages and curse the character for being an idiot. Let them understand what might lead someone to be that stupid. Let them feel within themselves their own tendencies for error so they can take steps to fix them before they manifest.

Toward the end of her essay, Ms. Gurdon quotes from the back cover of a recently-received YA ARC:

It so happened that, as the Twitterverse was roiling over "Darkness Too Visible," I received an advanced reader's copy of an "edgy paranormal" teen novel coming out in August. Have a look at the excerpt on the back cover, where publishers try to hook potential buyers: "I used to squirm when I heard people talking about cutting—taking a razor to your own flesh never seemed logical to me. But in reality, it's wonderful. You can cut into yourself all the frustrations people take out on you." Now ask yourself: Is a book the only thing being sold here?

Which, of course, demonstrates the folly of rhetorical questions. The excerpt on its face calls the practice of cutting illogical--but then provides a character who can explain why a teen might succumb to such an illogical practice. A character who will take the reader through that experience, in all its horror and folly and--I trust and hope--ultimately explain how to overcome the addiction of self-mutilation. For those who might be drawn to the practice, this book could serve as a life-saving reality check. For those who have never heard of it and would never do it, this book could still teach them about the damaging effects of addiction in any form and the value of staying far away from it.

No one--not even Ms. Gurdon--can know what the ultimate message of the book is without READING IT.

Now, I support Ms. Gurdon's right to express her opinion. I just wish she'd be more responsible about it. Rather than spotting scary themes, scenes, and habits in YA books and bemoaning the possible effects of exposing children to such horrors, I wish she'd take the time to read the books she's attacking. I wish she'd focus her attack on a book-by-book basis, pointing out what is TAUGHT, rather than what is SHOWN. I wish she'd criticize the moral of the story, rather than the means of delivery.

She might find that some lessons are most effectively learned in a crucible of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things.

Especially if those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things happen to a fictional character, instead of a real-live teen who was discouraged from reading about them for fear she'd learn too much about the horrible things in life.

What terrible things did you read about as a youth? Did you go right out and try them yourself?

UPDATE: Don't miss my YA Saves -- Counterpoint post. It was also published on International Business Times - Business & Books, which also linked to this post. *Waves to IBT readers*

The Stories We Tell Children

I write YA. I read YA. YA stories are some of the best stories written--and are increasingly popular among adults.

I can't help but notice, though, that some of the YA stories out there are more brutal and violent than many of the "adult" stories I read. One of my favorite adult authors writes books with quite a bit of blood and death, where the rather amoral heroines easily justify the killing of innocents--in a way that has me nodding along. Sure, sure. They had to die. Horrible, but necessary. (I would not recommend those books to children.) Other adult authors also deal with death, but it hardly ever seems to leave a mark, unless the death was a spouse or a child. (I'm sure I'm forgetting some adult books that mirror what I talk about below, but that's not really the point.)

Then we have Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Harry Potter, and Incarceron, among others. In these stories we not only see brutality and the death of innocents, but it happens to people we know and love. No one is safe. If an adult author were to kill off such beloved characters, it seems there'd be a backlash, and a corresponding fall in readership. Instead, these books are wildly popular.

I'm not getting on a high horse here--my own WIP has a measure of violence and I plan a bit of shocking death, as well, but I just finished Incarceron and had to wonder: what stories are we telling our children? Is it good for them to see the world as uncertain and violent, with betrayal around every corner? More importantly, perhaps: why do they like these stories so much?

I have a theatre background and one thing that is always stressed in the theatre is the beneficial effect of catharsis. So playwrights, directors, and actors will put their characters through horrible experiences, hoping the audience will be able to feel the same emotions... and thus be more capable of dealing with their own mini-dramas in real life. I think, rather sadly, that this is what is happening in YA fiction.

When people die in YA stories, it leaves a mark on the surviving characters. Very few simply pass into death unnoticed, with the MC unscarred. The worlds these characters inhabit are exceptionally uncertain, with immense problems and betrayals lurking around every corner. Our world today is also uncertain, and our children deal with big-bad issues that can literally kill them... but that often are portayed as fun, harmless, and cool. Some are scarred by brushing against these issues, some are killed, but, I think, all are aware of the battle.

One of my favorite quotes lately is “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.” — G.K. Chesterton (Thanks again, Shea.) In each of the horribly violent YA series (well, I'm taking a bit on faith, since not all of them are complete), the big-bad is conquered in the end. It is horrible, and there are awful consequences to be borne, but success, of a sort, is possible. Almost inevitable.

There's a lot of hope, hidden in the horror, and I think that our teens prefer to know and accept the truth that they will carry scars--so long as they also get to slay the dragon.

What do you think?